The lights went out one by one on PlayhouseSquare. As a gray twilight gave way to a seemingly impenetrable gloom, this once-dazzling stretch of Euclid Avenue was plunged into a midnight world of desolation and despair.

Those grand theaters shut down their marquees and closed their doors in the late '60s. Water damage, fire and neglect quickly reduced the Allen, Ohio, Palace and State to little more than likely candidates for the wrecking ball. The epitaph could have been provided by the last line of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death," where "darkness and decay . . . held illimitable dominion over all."’

And as each light went out, a little bit of hope for downtown Cleveland was extinguished. Imagine that moment. Recall, if you will, how bleak things looked in that era of urban unrest, white flight and Rust Belt woes.

Now imagine yourself standing somewhere – almost anywhere – in the glittering, joyously vibrant PlayhouseSquare of today. You are surrounded by more lights and more hope than ever before. And you realize there's something downright magical, almost miraculous, about the revitalization of this area given up for dead in the early '70s.

"Staging Success: The PlayhouseSquare Story," a documentary premiering at 8 p.m. Thursday on WVIZ Channel 25, explains where the magic came from and how it worked despite the most daunting of odds. You don't always want a magician to explain his tricks, but, in this case, the process is illuminating for this city and other would-be wizards wishing to summon a bit of that enchantment stuff.

"Just think what we would have lost," architect Peter van Dijk says in the early stages of "Staging Success." "Cleveland would be so much the poorer if we didn't have PlayhouseSquare."

That's true economically and spiritually. And the results have been profound, says Wall Street Journal columnist Joel Henning: "The vision of the people who were involved early on went way beyond simply historic preservation of a few lovely theaters and goes into the outreach into the community in a way that really, to my knowledge, has never existed anywhere before."

Still, this is an inspiring riches-to-rags-to-riches tale, and to truly appreciate how far PlayhouseSquare had fallen in the early '70s, you must first understand how highly it had been esteemed by the citizens of Cleveland. This Yaw accomplishes with an affectionate run of memories shared by movers and shakers who threw their support behind the PlayhouseSquare revival.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich recalls how wonderfully vast the screens seemed in those movie palaces of his youth. Former Ohio State Legislator Patrick Sweeney tells us that all his first dates were at the PlayhouseSquare theaters. Belkin Productions co-founder Michael Belkin Sr. remembers skipping school to see vaudeville acts in the elegant theaters built when the Roaring '20s were beginning to reach full roar.

Most touching of all, former senator, Ohio governor and Cleveland mayor George Voinovich recalls taking his now-wife Janet to PlayhouseSquare.

REVIEW

Staging Success: The PlayhouseSquare Story

What: The premiere of a documentary about Cleveland’s performing arts center.

"I courted her at those theaters," Voinovich says. "In the old days they used to have these photographers on the street that snapped your picture. That's the first picture that we have in our photo album of our life together."

And, of course, to complete the picture, we get to see this snapshot of two smiling kids riding the magic carpet of PlayhouseSquare. It's a moment frozen in time – a lovely moment for one couple and one thriving section of the city.

Then the magic ran out. Euclid Avenue became a ghost town. PlayhouseSquare was dying.

A new dose of magic was needed, and, as this brightly paced documentary explains in stirring fashion, it was provided by a romantic idealist named Ray Shepardson.

Yaw and his team put Shepardson on the record, thank goodness. Every drama needs a leading man, and Shepardson fills the bill in engaging style, although the definition of leading man is open to discussion. His PlayhouseSquare contemporaries provide us with many tantalizing interpretations.

One calls him eccentric. One calls him crazy. One says he is a visionary. One says he is a genius. You may end up voting for all of the above.

Shepardson, who was 26 when he hit Cleveland in 1968, describes himself as a "farm kid from Seattle." The one thing everyone agrees on is that Ray Shepardson was the man with a dream and the man with a plan.

He walked into the crumbling theaters in 1970. The stages were in ruins. Plaster was falling from what was left of the ceilings. The place was a mess. And still, Shepardson saw the possibilities. More amazingly, he was able to make others see the possibilities.

This is where the magic act starts. The conjurer is standing center stage, detailing what he's about to accomplish before your very eyes. And you're thinking, "No way he can pull this off."

Yet, four decades after Shepardson staged the first concert at the Allen Theatre, PlayhouseSquare is second only to New York's Lincoln's Center as the nation's largest performing arts center. Four decades after the Ohio and State theaters were slated to be razed to make way for a parking lot, the possibilities continue to grow for PlayhosueSquare.

"No one would have imagined that in the '70s," says Art Falco, the president and CEO of PlayhouseSquare. "No one would have imagined that in the '80s. And I'm not even certain that anyone would have imagined that in the early '90s."

Even knowing the outcome, you gaze at Sherpardson in 1972 and think, "This can't work." It wasn't hocus pocus, of course. This was the type of magic that required unwavering dedication, timely influxes of cash and growing support from the community.

It needed Shepardson's impossible dream, and then it needed Shepardson to step aside so others could make this dream come true. Charting the step-by-step journey are an impressive array of witnesses, including: Lainie Hadden, who rallied Junior League support for the restoration; lawyer Oliver "Pudge" Henkel; Joseph Garry, the director of the landmark 1973 production of "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris," which ran for two and a half years; John F. Lewis, past PlayhouseSquare board chair; Gina Vernaci, PlayhouseSquare's senior vice president for theater operations; and Voinovich.

Resisting the temptation to oversell the narrative, "Staging Success" opts instead for a straightforward, understated approach. Yaw wisely lets the facts speak for themselves. Yes, it's a history lesson, but it's an incredibly valuable lesson about the power of the arts to revitalize, energize and inspire – a lesson for all cities and a lesson for all of us..

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